Traces
by Ayehli
Summary: Inspired by the last line of the film. Short story told in alternating viewpoints. re-formatted in chapter form
1. Chapter 1

They told us to make our world.

We were still children, Kira and I, holding each other there on the bright white stones of the castle, her body's heart beating fiercely where it had been silent only moments before. Like children we watched in awe as the UrSkeks merged with the light of the crystal and left the world behind, leaving us to make our own, and having no idea how.

We did not speak for a long time. We looked at the large opening in the castle roof where the three suns shone down, looked into the crystal until it seemed our eyes would burn away, though we felt no pain. We had lived our lives always in the shadow of darkness and death, and to now be surrounded by so much light, to feel every breath moving through us with such urgency, made us drunk with joy.

Aughra harangued us from the balcony. "Make world!" she shouted. "You, gelflings, you hear them! Make world!"

I stared up at her, but it was Kira who spoke. "How?"

Aughra shook her head and growled. It seemed we would always disappoint her. "Questions, questions, too many questions. You go. Learn. Make world. No one know how."

She hobbled away. I wondered if she would return to her orrery, to wait and watch the movements of the suns and the planets until another thousand years had passed. Maybe she would not live that long. I felt somehow that she would.

Fizzgig bounded down to us from where he had perched with Aughra, and Kira greeted him as though she had never seen him fall to certain death. We lay their on the floor, the three of us, still drunk on the rays of the sun and the crystal.

Again it was Kira who spoke. "We should go now."

I did not move. "Where?"

"I don't know."


	2. Chapter 2

I clung to Fizzgig as I had clung to Ydra when I was a baby. I lay with Jen in the glow of all that was good for what might have been minutes, or hours, or days, and then I felt my legs moving of their own accord, and I was standing and leading Jen out of the castle.

The hallways and corridors were empty. I saw no signs of my podling family, only the broken husks of Garthim soldiers. I wondered if we had indeed lingered longer than we realized, and hoped that my family had begun to make their way home.

We stopped at the gate through which the UrRu had entered, staring out at the vast plain before us, green and flowing with water where once it had been barren and black. Jen finally spoke.

"Where will we go?"

It fell to me to make the decision. "Home."

"But where is our home now?

"The podling village."

Jen looked away. I knew that he would not disagree with me out of love, but I sensed his doubt.

"It could be your home too. Not only mine."

He smiled. "Yes. But how do we make a world of our own when we already have a home?"

I laughed. "We will make a home with my family first. Then we will make our own world."

"How?"

"I don't know."


	3. Chapter 3

Our landstriders lived again, along with, it seemed, everything else on Thra. We mounted them and took off across a land that was alien to both of us in its lushness. Perhaps more alien to me than to Kira, who had grown up in the swamp. The smell of so many living things made me dizzy.

The journey took us a day and a night, and we never felt hungry or needed sleep. When we reached Kira's village the podlings emerged from half-rebuilt dwellings in a flood of tears and cries in the language that I still did not understand. They crushed her in their arms and wept over her, and she over them, and then they turned to me and I let them embrace me again and again, weeping in spite of myself, reveling in the feel of so much unashamed flesh.

Days of drinking and eating and dancing followed, a kind of boisterousness that must have surprised even the podlings, who seemed to live only for those simple pleasures. In those first few days I rarely thought of what the UrSkeks had told us, content only to live in the podlings' world and having no desire to make one of my own.

In the weeks that followed, when the boisterousness died down and the podlings' simple homes were finally rebuilt I sensed them watching us. I was learning their language, and I caught furtive whispers that I barely understood, hints that they were waiting for us to do something, to make some kind of decision. I lay beside Kira in a hut they had fashioned for us and the whispers echoed in my mind as we slept, layered with the words of the UrSkeks.

I finally told Kira that we must speak to Ydra. She agreed. Ydra seemed unsurprised by our questions, and smiled at us in a way that told me she knew more than she spoke.

I told her, in halting pod speech with Kira's help, that we had been told to make our own world. She nodded and reached out to touch us both, her hands embracing mind and then Kira's.

"Many thousands of years we lived alongside gelflings," she said. "They made their dwellings of stone, we made ours of wood and earth. We lived within a day, they seemed to always look beyond, to something we could not see. We did not understand them, but they were kind, and we were kind, and we were happy with them in the world.

"We felt the deaths of so many gelflings as keenly as if they were podlings. A light went out of the world. We continued to live as we always had, hiding as best we could from Garthim, but a piece of our world was missing without the gelflings.

"When Kira came to us we rejoiced that not all gelflings were dead. We did not know what to do with her at first, but we soon learned that she could eat our foods and live in our dwellings and be happy as podling children were.

"And then you came, and there were two instead of one, and we knew that the light could come back into the world again, that once more perhaps there could be gelflings in the world."

Kira coughed as she translated the last words. When I looked at her she seemed to be blushing. I looked back and forth between them, wondering if I had not understood a word or a phrase.

Ydra laughed at me. "It is simple, young one. To make your world you must first make children."

Kira laughed and blushed harder. I began to feel embarrassed, though I knew not why.

"I don't…the UrRu never taught me…"

Ydra shook her head. "Nothing to teach. Dreamfast, and you will know. Go. Make your world."


	4. Chapter 4

I knew more than Jen knew, and it made me shy. I had grown up among those who celebrated offspring in the same way they celebrated everything else. I had seen their courtships and overheard their couplings, always pushing aside the sadness I felt in knowing that I would never share that knowledge completely, that as long as I was the only one of my kind left I would never bear children.

Then Jen came, and it was different. I knew it long before he did, that this day would come.

But now, standing with him in front of our small home, with podlings furtively watching from the corners of the swamp, I found I could not look at him.

My world had changed, and would change forever. I had imagined myself growing old and dying, surrounded by those who loved and cared for me, but no one of my own likeness. Now that self was gone. I felt the weight of a thousand years on my shoulders, the watching eyes of my parents and ancestors long dead, voices that whispered that the world was ours to create.

I felt Jen's hand in mine. He was smiling at me, and in that moment the weight seemed to lift, and I felt warm, knowing that perhaps he might have chosen me even if there had been others to choose. His voice shook when he spoke.

"I'm afraid."

I took both of his hands in mine. "You are brave to say so."

"I know so little."

I let myself flow through his hands, let the dreamfasting begin. It was as Ydra had told us. There was nothing to teach, and nothing to learn—only the instant understanding between our minds that for the first time spread to our physical selves, and made us need as we had never needed before.

We went inside.


	5. Chapter 5

I remember the silence most of all, that first night. Laying side by side in the dark where even the nighttime sounds of the swamp seemed muffled. Our dreamfasting lingered in the touch of Kira's palm on my arm, and as I drifted off to sleep our dreams mingled, soft mixes of smells and tastes without any story, like the river of thoughts that seemed ready to burst forth from me but that I could not put into words.

The podlings joked with us and gave us hand-made talismans and dolls. When a month went by and there was no sign of life in Kira's belly they only laughed and told us that gelflings were larger, that it must take us longer. When three months went by they still smiled, but Ydra visited Kira often and gave her tea mixed with bitter-tasting herbs. Three months became six, and six months became a year, and the podlings ceased their joking.

Kira was quiet. I knew that her mind must be filled with the same questions as mine, and at times I heard her speak them when we dreamfasted. Sometimes I felt anger in her, and I shared it.

I thought of seeking out Aughra again, but Kira had grown more despondent, and I worried at the thought of a long journey. Though it pained me, one day I asked her if she had ever considered a union with one of the podlings, to bear a child that would at least contain some part of us.

She smiled sadly at me and shook her head. "Ydra told me once that it had been tried, many times, in the days when gelfling were growing scarce. It was strange to both—there was affection, but the bond was not the same. And there were never any offspring from the unions."

I had nothing more to offer her. I thought of the UrSkeks, vanished somewhere that we could never reach. I wanted to curse them for offering us a gift and then seeming to snatch it away.


	6. Chapter 6

My body feels cold.

It is alive, I know. It lives and breathes and lies with Jen and feels the warmth of his skin, but it is cold with new knowing, with an emptiness that was never felt before.

I was ready. Ready to be the one who remade our world, with help from Jen. I was ready for my body to be holy, to be the carrier of new dreams and new worlds.

Now my body is only a body, only flesh, and I no longer know what to make of it.


	7. Chapter 7

The seasons pass for podling and gelfling as they always have, with the festivals and the rights of passage and songs sung in a language that I no longer need Kira's help to understand. The sadness that lingers in the village's only two gelflings cannot forever cast a pall over the village. The podlings have known much sorrow and death, and they go on as they always have, though they embrace us and ply us with food and drink when they sense that our sadness is heavier than usual.

I lie with Kira in the nights that she seems to dread, curling my body into hers in an attempt to fill that emptiness that I know from dreamfasting still haunts her. I have never had her gift for words, and so I try my best to simply be warm for her, warm and present. She is grateful, and I am grateful that she is with me, and if there is sadness between us there is no longer anger.

One night she has a dream that I do not see, and before I am half awake she has leaped from beneath our blanket and is saying the same words again and again, "The houses of the old ones…the houses of the old ones…"

I run after her, stumbling through brush and trees on that dark trail where a Skeksis once chased us. She tears through the gates of the ruins. If the podlings have heard her they do not follow us. I know that they still fear the place, though the death that was visited upon it is centuries old.

I find Kira with her arms wrapped around the stone chair in the middle of what must have been a throne room, gasping. I put my arms around her, fearing that the sadness has finally driven her mad. But she does not weep. For the first time in many nights, she smiles at me.

"I have seen our world," she says, her eyes glistening.

I nod, listening.

"I have seen the world we will make." She stands and moves slowly through the ruins, touching the crumbling walls, the vine-covered columns, finally running her hands over the Wall of Prophecy that had led us to the castle. She touches the symbols that she cannot read, their shapes faint in the moonlight.

"We have to rebuild the houses of the old ones, Jen. We have to show the podlings and the nebri and the landstriders what we once were. And then we have to leave a trace. On this wall. I will tell the story, and you will write it, because you are the only one who can."

In the light of the moon I could see her face was flushed, and her hair sparkled. She seemed holy to me. I held her, feeling the quickness of her heartbeat.

"This is how," she said. "This is how we make the world."


	8. Chapter 8

I had thought that my body was the key, those mysterious forces inside me that would have created a child. I had imagined my child again and again, though I had never seen it in dreamfasting. I had thought that I was the mother of worlds, the key to the survival of gelflings.

But I was wrong. It was not my body that would make the world. It was my mind, and my voice. And Jen's.

I told Ydra that we must rebuild the houses of the old ones, and that we would need the help of the podlings. Her face clouded at first, and I could tell she did not trust me. Perhaps she thought that grief had made me mad, as dreamfasting had told me Jen had thought, at one time. But in time she came to see that I was not mad, that I was alive again. She took me in her arms, as best she could, my tiny mother with her child now twice her size, and cradled me as she had when I was a small child.

"I have loved you always, my Kira-_lyev_," she whispered to me. "I never claimed to know why you were sent to us. The podlings think I am wise, but this question I could never answer for them—I could only say that we must treat you as one of our own, love you and cherish you as we would any podling child. And now I have my answer, Kira-_lyev_. It is you and your Jen who must leave the trace, who must rebuild what gelflings made for all to see, so that Thra will not forget you when you are gone."

I felt my heart catch at her words. She spoke aloud that which I had learned in the dream but somehow dared not say—that Jen and I were the last. The houses of the old ones and the story written in stone would be the only trace we left on this world.

Ydra seemed to hear my thoughts, as she always had. "Not the only trace, Kira-_lyev_," she whispered. "Not the only trace."


	9. Chapter 9

It was Ydra who convinced the podlings to help us, though it took some time for them to even go near the ruins of the gelfling city. It was Ydra who convinced them that the city's ghosts had long since left, that there was no danger in stone and vines.

Kira led the stronger podlings in removing centuries of vines and debris, gently and cautiously, tearing away only the rotted bits and leaving some in place—the unthinking destruction of living vines and leaves would be anathema to the podlings. Kira and I had never built anything, and the podlings had never worked with stone, but somehow—with the help of the vines and trees that had grown into and around the remains of our city—it all began to grow again.

While Kira built, I taught the podlings to read.


	10. Chapter 10

Some days, as I hauled rock and wood and fitted one part of a stone into another though I knew not how, I would gaze off beyond the swamp, beyond the grazing nebri and khireks and landstriders and gently trilling water-birds. I would try to imagine what this world would be like when Jen and I were gone.

Not so different, I would usually think. I had never known a world filled with gelflings. My earliest memory was of my mother's death. There were other memories that I sometimes saw in dreamfastings, but like all dreamfastings they were faint, flickers and impressions, not the clear, hard vision that was my mother's face.

Jen and I were only two. Thra would not break without us.

I wondered if I should feel sad, if I should rage against the dying of my own people, weep for a future world of gelflings that would never be and for a past that I could not remember. I tried, but it was as raging against the sun, or the wind. Our people had had their time on Thra, and it was ending.

I am sure Jen thought the same things, though he did not speak them aloud. His habit of quietness had grown since we began building our village. There were times when I longed for a gift of words from him, but he said much with a look and a touch, and usually I did not find myself wanting.

The gelfling village grew under our careful hands. Not as it had been—it was being rebuilt by podling hands, with podling sensibilities—but beautiful, bringing back memories that were not entirely mine. On the night before the last stone was put into place I asked Jen to sleep there with me, with the stars shining down on us through the mixture of vines and wood that made up the roof. We slept, and dreamfasted, and it was as though a thousand grateful voices long silenced awoke to whisper me to sleep. I closed my eyes in the peace of remembering.


	11. Chapter 11

Some time after we had finished rebuilding the gelfling city Aughra arrived.

Her appearance frightened some of the podlings—she reminded them of Skeksis. Kira and I reassured them that she was a friend.

She grunted a greeting. "You make gelfling home again." We nodded. She put her hands on her hips and grunted again. "Saw in my crystals. Want to see true."

We took her to the rebuilt ruins and watched her move slowly among them, sniffing and touching as though she were examining new specimens of plant and animal. I realized that she was growing old. She had always been old, but there was a slowness to her movement now that had not been there before.

After a long time spent investigating every corner of the village, she fixed us both with a stare and gave a curt nod. "Good," she said. "Is good thing. Always liked gelflings. Sad to see them go. Good that something stays."

With that she turned and left, back in the direction she had come from, without a good-bye. I wondered if anyone would watch over her orrery, as the podlings would watch over our village.


	12. Chapter 12

Our village was a miracle.

We always called it a village, though it was made up of only one central structure and a few other, smaller buildings that might have been homes. A thousand years ago it must have stretched farther across the plains, with hundreds of gelflings living within the walls of its many parts. We have only rebuilt a small part of it, but it is enough.

Jen and I choose not to live there. It seems strange to live in such a holy place. And we prefer the company of the podlings, who also seem to feel that it would be wrong to make their homes in our rebuilt village. But we spend hours there when we are not working in the gardens or tending the nebri.

Our village has pathways of white stone mixed together with crawling vines. Restored pillars hold up roofs of wood and vine, letting sun shine through in the daytime and starlight shine through in the night. Everywhere things grow and live—brightly colored plants and flowers, birds, insects. It is a haven for all who lost so much.

Still the most beautiful thing for me is the Wall of Prophecy, with its many symbols and pictures that Jen has taught me to read. My tongue still stumbles, my learning not as quick as the younger podlings, but I persevere. It is my tongue that told our story, and his hand that carved it, on a clean space of stone next to the prophecy that told of the conjunction. What was sundered and undone has at last become whole again.

For the first time I begin to feel myself aging. I never learned, nor did Jen, how long a gelfling lives—longer than the podling but not as long as an UrSkek, I would imagine. I see age in Jen as well, in small ways—tiny lines on his skin, a slightly slower walk.

One day he brings me to the Wall of Prophecy. He leads me by the hand and does not speak, as is his custom.

He places my hand on the carvings in the wall, the ones he himself made so delicately. I nod and smile at him, but he presses my hand lower, and I realize that he his pointing to something new, and his hand is shaking slightly. There are new symbols—three lines' worth—below our own story.

"Will you read?" he asks me quietly.

My lips stumble over the unfamiliar symbols, and Jen helps me, filling in a sound or a word here and there. We read together, our voices making strange song out of his words.

My mind is still unaccustomed to reading, and so there is a strange pause between my mouth speaking the words and the understanding of them. And then the understanding settles over me, and I begin to weep for this gift that he has given me in stone, Jen who so seldom speaks, the only one like me in the world, has given me words.

He embraces me and we lean against that stone, the last of our kind, wrapped together in the shadow of our world, a life carved in flesh and rock. It is all that we will leave behind, and it is enough.

The End


End file.
